Data Dude Has Trouble Diffing Views, Stored Procedures, and Functions

Data Dude's schema compare feature is a technical wonderment . . . when it works. It seems to be fine when comparing databases to each other. Unfortunately, when comparing a data dude "project" to a database created independently from Data Dude, Data Dude seems think that there is extra whitespace in its cached copy of the ddl for the database's view, function and stored procedure ddl. What's going on here? It turns out that Data Dude is very picky about what is considers properly written ddl definitions. Data Dude wants you to allow it to write all the ddl to the database! Thus if you have created your database objects in SQL Server Management Studio you'll have to resync going from the Data Dude project back to the database after importing the schema from the database--a full round trip. You should be careful about backing up, as always.

It's a shame such a great tool has such a lame bug.

Note: Data Dude is the nickname for the Microsoft project formally known as Visual Studio Team System 2008 Database Edition.

Adding a File to a Setup Project in Visual Studio

I've had serious installer trouble after adding a C# project's content file to a Visual Studio Setup project. Try as I might, each time I tried to use a content-file output from another project I got a failed install. Repeated attempts to install gave me an erroneous error saying the service was already installed. This was because the failed install left an orphaned registry entry. Wonderful. I had to use "sc delete" to get rid the registry entry.

Lesson learned: just right click on the installer and select "add file." I referenced a file in the other project in this manner and the installer project created a relative reference. Should do the trick.

The reason for adding a content file to the install was to allow a perl script to be executed by the application.

SharePoint UI Madness

For most user-level activities, SharePoint's UI has typically been adequate. The administrative features, however, continue to sport UI problems that are world class. Someday I'll get around to making a list of my absolute most hated UI blunders in SharePoint. I think it would be best to wait for a day when I'm already in a bad mood because some of these problems seriously perturb me.

Today I had to deal with one that really got me going: adding and editing user accounts for a SharePoint site. You would think that the link to that functionality would just jump out at you once you navigate to site admin (called "settings" in SharePoint-speak) . Nope. The appropriate link appears exclusively in the left sidebar of the "people" page for your site. First navigate to the settings page of your site by using the "Site Actions" dropdown in the upper right hand corner of the page. Then click on "People and Group" link under the "User and Permissions" list. On the ensuing page, People.aspx, look to the left nav for the bolded words "All People." Once you click this link, you'll see all the "people." Thus, in getting to this page, to do something really basic, we've gone through three different navigation schemes!

Below is a screen shot showing the "All People" link.